Today, desktop publishing in both the software and printing sectors has advanced to quality levels comparable to professional offset printing.
Despite the fact that printing equipment, special quality paper and publishing software are readily available on the market, there remains one outstanding component that would complete desktop publishing operations: the binding of a desktop-printed book in a professional and traditional style.
A traditional book has a collection of printed pages or bookblock mounted in a cover by endpapers which are pasted to the inside front and back covers of the book. The printed pages making up the bookblock are usually a series of folded over sheets or “sections” that are sewn together and assembled into the bookblock. Commercial binding produces these traditional books of good quality at a reasonable price for large series, but for individual books or books produced in small series the cost of binding is prohibitive.
Thermal binding using hot melt adhesives has been widely used particularly for soft cover books. However, thermal binding does not produce a book having the same qualities as a traditionally bound book. U.S. Pat. No. 6,042,318 for example discloses an apparatus and method for hot melt binding.
WO 92/02888 describes a computer based book manufacturing, distributing and retailing system wherein the text and images of a large number of books are
stored in a computer, and individual books can be printed to command and bound in a thermal binder, enabling the delivery of a selected book to a purchaser in a short time.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,202 describes a book publishing kit for children, the kit including a number of sheets and templates permitting children to provide text and drawings to be forwarded for assembling and publishing as a book.
A child's bookbinding kit has been marketed under the name “Story Plus”. This is intended primarily for children to produce a book including the child's paintings on folded-over sheets. The sheets have large openings for the child to sew the folded sheets together and assemble them into a book using glue.
GB-A 2 221 196 describes making a book by folding printed sheets and wire-stitching them along the fold line, in replacement of prior techniques where the folded sheets were sewn along their fold line.
JP-A-2002 178664 describes producing a book using a personal computer using a standard story that can be varied by the author, printing on a standard printer and then stapling together the printed sheets and sticking the outside sheet of the stapled printed sheets directly to a book cover.
Various pieces of office equipment have been developed for clasping or attaching together sheets using plastic or metal securing elements, or by thermal binding. However the resulting assembled sheets are not comparable to the traditional book structure having a stitch-bound bookblock mounted in a cover by endpapers.
There remains a need for a simple and easy-to-use book binding kit, which enables any individual or business to manufacture a bound book of traditional structure and of the quality found on the market, using existing desktop publishing equipment.